The road from the station passed through Ignatyevo, then veered off toward the homestead where we spent our summers before the war.It then continued on through a dense oak forest to Tomshino. We usually only recognized our kin when they appeared from behind a large bush out in the field. If a man turned toward the house, then it was Father. If he didn't...then it wasn't Father...and it meant father would never return.
Now that I'm down here...there are all kinds of things down here. Roots, bushes. Have you ever thought — Has it ever occurred to you that plants feel and are aware...maybe even understand? The trees. They're not hurrying anywhere...while we rush around in a great fuss...spouting our banalities. All because we don't trust nature within us. It's all our mistrust and haste...our lack of time to stop and think.
We celebrated every moment of our trysts as an epiphany, alone in all the world.
Lighter and more daring than a bird's wing, you skipped down the stairs, leading me, dizzy, through moist lilacs to your kingdom beyond the looking glass.
When night fell, a blessing was bestowed upon me:
The altar gates parted, and in the darkness nakedness shone brightly, slowly reclining.
Upon waking I exclaimed, "Be blessed!" Knowing my blessing was too bold. You slept, and the lilacs on the table reached out to touch your eyelids with the blue of the universe.
Touched by that blue, your eyelids were calm, and your hand was warm.
Inside the crystal, rivers pulsed, mountains smoked, oceans glimmered.
In your palm you held the orb of crystal, asleep on your throne. And — my God! — you were mine. A wakening, you transformed our mundane human language.
Speech filled my throat with such resounding force that the word "you" revealed its new meaning: "my sovereign."
Everything in the world was transfigured,
even simple things like basin and jug, their layers of hardened water standing between us as if on guard.
We were led who knows where, to cities built by magicthat parted before us like mirages.
Mint bowed beneath our feet, birds accompanied us on our path, fish swam upstream, and the sky spread out before our eyes,
while fate followed behind in our footsteps like a madman with a razor.
I don't believe in premonitions...and I do not fear omens.
I do not flee from slander or poison.
There is no death on this earth.
All are immortal. Everything is immortal.
There's no need to fear death at 17 or 70.
There's only reality and light.
There's neither darkness nor death in this world.
We've all reached the shore,
and I'm among those who haul in the nets when immortality comes swimming by the shoal.
Live in a house and it will not crumble.
I'll summon up any century at will.
I'll enter into it and build a home there.
That's why your children and wives all share my table.
At one table sit both forefathers and grandchildren.
What is to come is already here.
And if I raise my hand, its five rays will remain with you.
With my collarbones like beams I shored up every day that passed.
I measured time with a surveyor's staff and traversed it like a mountain range.
I chose an age to my own measure.
We headed south, raising dust on the steppes.
The tall grass smoldered and a grasshopper sported,
touching its antenna to a horseshoe and prophesying, threatening me with ruin like a monk.
I strapped my fate fast to my saddle, and even now I rise up in the stirrups of the future like a youth.
My immortality is all I need for my blood to flow from age to age. For a warm and trusty corner
I'd give my life of my own free will,
had life's swift needle not drawn me through this world like a thread.
A man has but one body, like a prison cell.
The soul is sick of this solid shell with ears and eyes like five-kopeck coins
and skin — scar upon scar — stretched tight over bones. Out through the cornea the soul flies to a heavenly spring, to an icy spire and a chariot for birds.
And through its living prison bars it hears the rattle of woods and fields, the trumpet of the seven seas.
A soul without flesh is shameful, like a body without a shirt.
No thoughts or actions, no designs or plans.
A riddle with no answer:
Who will return from dancing on that floor where there's no one dancing?
I dream of a different soul dressed in different garb,
burning up like alcohol as it flits from timidity to hope,
slipping away, shadowless,
leaving behind lilacs as a memento on the table.
Run, my child, and mourn not for poor Eurydice,
but drive your copper hoop through the wide world,
while in response to every step, you hear the earth reply, its voice joyful and dry.
